There is nothing quite like a glass of cold beer on a hot day, yet all glasses of cold beer are not equal. They range from a slightly cool beer in a disposable plastic cup through a truly cold beer in a glass dripping with condensation to a frosty mug hazed with ice and frozen water droplets. While the latter presentation may not be optimal from a taster's perspective, it captures a certain suggestion of “cooling-off” which is absent in a slightly cool pub draught.
In venues where coldness is paramount to taste, such as for example a golf course on a scorchingly hot day or basking in the hot sun at an oceanside resort the ultimate expression of “cold and refreshing” is to achieve ice crystals in the beverage. While this may be achieved in juices and such by adding ice to a cold beverage, it is generally unacceptable with beer as the ice will dilute and spoil the taste of the beer as the ice melts. The alternative is to form ice crystals from water inherent in the beverage, be it beer, “soda pop” or perhaps wine or other spirit containing beverage.
While it is simple enough in theory to form ice crystals in a beverage, it has in practice heretofore been virtually impossible to do so with any degree of control over the quantity and the consistency of ice crystals so formed. Simply cooling beer to below its freezing point generally results in a block of “ice” if the container is left closed or frozen “slush” if the container is opened before the beer turns to “ice”.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method and an apparatus for practising the method for providing a controllable amount of ice crystal formation in at least beer and perhaps other beverages.